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Thursday, February 27, 2014

DIY dyeing wool yarn with food coloring

My first, second and probably last attempt at dye my own yarn!

I saw all the pretty colorful yarn dyed with food coloring and I wanted to give it a try.
If you are in the US, you can find everything you need to know about yarn dyeing on the dyeyouryarn.com website. (thanks Filitaly for the hint!)

In Italy, lots of these brands aren't available, and I wanted to make my yarn exactly that day, without waiting for an amazon delivery... So a trip to the supermarket later, I started to get busy (and quite messy). My local supermarket carries only one brand, and only four colors... so I had to try and make it work with what I had.

Inspiration comes from the wonderful yarn I saw on Filipbrat FB page.
One thing to remember: things won't go according to plans!This is what I was aiming for: and this is what happened.

A closeup of the swatch made with my DIY yarn!

In the end, I was happy with the result, even if it is quite different from what I was looking for!

Because these food colors are really bright, I started with a skein of light grey 4 ply merino wool.

preparation of the colors: I used: blue, red and green.I added a splash of blue to the red and green to get the purple and the teal shades.

folded the skein in three parts and placed into the glass jars with the dye, as for the tutorial on la fiaba russa

The skein took about two days to dry. I speeded up the process by hang onto the radiator for the last 5-6 hours.

This is how it looks once rolled on the cone and knitted!

CONCLUSION:
I had fun, indeed.
But I will most likely not doing it again! Why?
Between colors, time, and a high chance of not getting what you're looking for, this project is a bit on the expensive side.
Not to mention that best results will happen while working with a small skein, rather than what I did: I had a thick 400 grams (almost a pound) skein to be able to complete a sweater.

Before that, I tried with some white yarn. This yarn was given to me by the lady that sold me the knitting machine. It a huge cone, and I didin't know the composition.I followed the tutorial from artherapy... and this is what happened.Major Craft Fail! turned out... it was acrylic. The blue didn't stick to my yarn at all,and all I got was a spotty dirty-white and pink yarn.Pink isn't really my thing!